Dr. Michael D. Halsey
CORKING A FINE WHINE
Colossians 1: 3-8
I
want all the teenagers in the auditorium this morning to stop listening to me
for just about five minutes. Tune out and then bring your ears back in just a
little bit. I don't want you to go out and do what I'm going to mention and then
when the police pull you out of your car, you say, "The devil and my pastor
made me do it."
A friend of mine was telling me that when he was in college, he and a few
of his friends got the idea to go and buy some water guns one summer's day. Then
they got in a car and started cruising the Philadelphia streets looking for road
workers, a particular type of road workers – those who were working in the
heat without a shirt on.
When they found one, they'd drive by and my friend and his cohorts in
crime would rise up, aim and fire, right at the guy's stomach. He described for
me how these workers would all of a sudden realize they were wet. They'd rub
their rather large stomachs and look up at the clouds as the car sped away.
This one particular hot day, they get in the car, guns loaded, and go cruising, looking for those choice workers. They find their target. They go by him. They rise up. They fire. Only this guy doesn't look up, he looks right at them. They speed up, only to find that a short distance away, a traffic light has just turned red.
The worker starts running and gets to their car, which is waiting for the
light to change. They start rolling up their windows and locking the doors. He
runs up to the car and starts screaming and yelling at them.
A man in the car behind them wonders what in the world is going on. He
gets out and goes up to the huge screaming maniac and asks, "What's
wrong?"
At this, the guy turns from the car and says, "They shot me with a
water gun!"
The man from the car looks at him and says, "Get back to work, you
big baby!"
The worker gets quiet, stares at the ground, and embarrassed, walks back
to his jackhammer.
OK, teenagers, you can tune back in now.
It's 60-62 A. D. Paul sits in a rented house, under arrest in Rome. He
can't go out and turn the world upside down like he used to. I mean he's the
best we've got. We don't have any "pinch-hitters" for this one.
Letting him get immobilized would be like pinch-hitting for Joe DiMaggio or Babe
Ruth, you just don't do that. We walk into Paul's room and we listen as he's
dictating a letter to, of all places, Podunk City - Colosse. We sort of brace
our ears because he must be pouring out a torrent of gripes, complaints, and
whines about how unfair all this is.
By the way, does it seem like to you that we American Christians spend
too much time whining about things? Things like:
1. "They're making fun of us on TV!" (but didn't they hang Christ
on a cross and dare Him to "save himself?")
2. "They're distorting what we say!" (but didn't they claim the
early church was drinking human blood and eating human
flesh?)
3. "They're insulting us!" (but didn't they claim that Jesus was illegitimate?)
No, we don't hear Paul complaining about anything. He's learned to cork a
fine whine. Instead, he's encouraging the believers in Colosse; he's creating a
positive environment to his letter right up front.
He says, "Although I've never been in your church, I'm praying for
you and when I do pray for you, I'm thanking God for what He's done in you. Your
pastor as told me all about what God's done in you and I'm thankful for
that."
Read verses 3-4 where we see that God has done two things that have
morphed them into a type of people they weren't. First of all, he says that he
has to thank God for it, because they didn't all of sudden come up and trust
Christ all by their unaided lonesome. God the Holy Spirit made the gospel clear
to them when they heard it. He opened their ears so they could understand the
issue was Christ and His death for them (John 16). And one by one, these
citizens of Slippery Rock believed. They couldn't have believed without the
convicting work of the Spirit. Nor could we. We didn't believe in Christ because
we were smart and "saw" it. We believed because the Holy Spirit
brought us to the place where we understood the issue of His death and
resurrection and to the place where we could choose for or against Christ.
These last few days I've started a lot of conversations off with the
words, "Let me tell you about my graduation." And you'd be amazed at
just how rude some complete strangers can be when I start things off that way.
But anyway, my daughter flew in from Colorado and you know, they don't give
those flights away. My two sons and one daughter-in-law drove all those hours up
from Austin to come to Dallas to be there. They brought a camcorder, they
recorded me in the line of march, they recorded my getting the diploma, they
recorded my going back to my seat in the auditorium. They were so excited from
the time they got there until it ended.
All weekend, I kept trying to figure out why they were all so excited.
And then it hit me: this was the first thing I've accomplished since they were
born. Or was it love?
It was a great time. If I were to ask you to define "a beard,"
what would you say? Well, we could start tossing words around like "facial
hair," but a good question would be "how much?" When does facial
hair stop being "facial hair" and become a beard? How much hair does
it take to make a beard? Well, I can't define it, but I know a beard when I see
one.
What's love? Maybe we can't define it, but isn't it interesting, we know
it when we see it. Vanstone points out that even babies, small children deprived
of love, instinctively know what love is when they see it.
In verse 4 Paul says that God has taken a people and made them a loving
people. Christianity is love for the unlikely, isn't it? We don't, by nature,
love those unlikely to be loved, do we? Yet the gospel changes us to where we
come to love unlikelies.
I don't know if
you're like me, but I like to be liked, don't you? I've spent many an
uncomfortable hour in places where I know that I'm not liked. That's tough isn't
it? When we have a choice we go where we're appreciated and loved. Sociologists
say that's one reason for the rise of gangs. When kids aren't loved and
appreciated in their families, there's this gang on the south side that'll
appreciate them, give them strokes, rewards, but all for the wrong reasons.
People aren't going to go to a church that doesn't appreciate them
either. I hope before you leave the auditorium this morning you'll go tell
someone you appreciate them, someone you've never told before. For example,
"I really appreciate you because whenever I see you, you smile at me, and I
like that." "I appreciate you because you show me how to cork a fine
whine, when things are tough, that's what you do."
Paul's gotten the pastor's report (verses 7-8) about the believers in Colosse.
No, instead of whining, Paul has heard about what God has done in the
life of those believers and he's very thankful for it. In verse 5 he says that
this love and trust in Christ springs from the fact that they knew they'd all be
in heaven and rewarded together in heaven one day. They're all up there now,
just enjoying it all, enjoying being together with Christ.
Paul looks around his rented house (Acts 28:30) and he reminds himself
and them, that even though he's having to grow a legal taproot in Rome, the
gospel is a worldwide movement. It's not some secret little society with its
little secret knowledge like what the false teachers in Colosse are panhandling.
No. It's the grace gospel movement that's blowing and going all over the world,
even as he speaks.
Far from whining,
he's so happy that nobody can stop the gospel. Let's remind ourselves that
governments can pass laws against the gospel, but it goes on stronger. I
remember a few years ago that believers were getting all upset about Madelyn
Murray O'Hare. She was going to have preaching outlawed, taken off the radio and
television. It wasn't true, but many believed it and became very upset. But
really, do you really think that Madelyn Murray O'Hare can stop grace, can
stymie God? Preposterous! Pass all the laws you want to against Paul, you still
can't stop the gospel! It'll go right on bearing fruit all over the world.
As Paul writes this, Thomas goes to India, James to Spain, Bartholomew
and Simon to Iran and Iraq, Mark into Africa, John to Turkey, preaching, dying,
building churches.
If the Caesars couldn't stop the gospel's changing of lives around the
world, who do you think can? They obviously didn't stop it, because we're here.
The gospel got all the way from Jerusalem to Thessalonica to Colosse to Georgia!
Paul thinks of all the churches already going strong: Ephesus, Laodicea, Smyna,
Philadelphia, and on and on. And more on the way!
So what? Cork that fine whine!
It's so easy for us to fail to thank God for His world-wide production of
fruit, isn't it? It's easy to forget to think about all the changed lives right
here in this auditorium, isn't it? Have you stopped to thank God for that? You
know, instead of trying to beat the Methodists to the cafeteria on Mother's Day,
God might want you to stop and talk to somebody here this morning and let them
know that you are so truly thankful for them. Do you realize how encouraging
that would be? Most of don't hear many kind words out there in the "howling
wilderness" that is the world-system. Most hear about quotas and sales, but
not much sincere appreciation. Somebody may be desperate today to hear a kind
word, because she didn't hear any the last 6 days in the jungle.
And isn't it great to think that once grace gets a hold on us that God's
going to change us, develop us? People may have been attracted to you because of
your competence or because of your "smarts," but when grace starts
changing you, they'll be attracted by your warm heart. They can't define it, but
they know it when they see it.
Michelangelo took a piece of marble that two others had tried to do
something with but failed. Even Leonardo de Vinci had turned the stone down. The
two that
tried had scarred it. But Michelangelo took it and built a shed around it and
started to work. When he was through, he'd created his magnificent work,
"David." Did you know that you can still see the scars on the hair
area that the other artists had made with their chisels? Did you know that if
you look closely, you can see other scars?
When God starts changing us, people will still be able to see old scars
here and there in our lives, but it won't make any difference because they'll
see God at work changing your heart, warming your life, and creating His
masterwork in you. From Colosse to Georgia, you can't stop God.